I was intending to head off to London to catch up with some friends and celebrate my birthday, but the whole thing became bigger than Ben Hur. Many many meals at fantastic, interesting and fun restaurants were had.

Some of the highlights: the original Wagamama's with Jules, which brought back funny memories of me being a callow youth when it first opened; a relatively improptu and relatively cheap meal at St. John's where the offal was fabulous (but rich rich rich), and more amazingly, the broccoli was too (Christopher was a very happy camper), the wine (Mon P'tit Pithon from Côtes Catalanes, haha) bizarre and tannin-crystally yet fruity-good; a boozy lunch at the wind- and rain-swept Prospect of Whitby with around 40 people who were able to make it from near and far; a spontaneous and slightly tacky tandoori dinner in the West End with a slightly different subset of people; lunch at the Fat Duck (ten very happy diners, including John West as last-minute swap-in number 10, yay!); and a late night drinking appointment followed by a delightful meal in Chinatown (with Mikolaj and Niki).

People all seemed to get on like a house on fire, which was great. My dad had a great time telling embarrassing stories about my childhood (with accompanying photo!) to friends.

I found myself thinking about friends who weren't able to make it along. For those to whom I wasn't able to say it in person, I'd like to record my public thanks for being such a kind, wise, tolerant and all-round wonderful person. I couldn't wish for better friends at all.

Some random photos from the Fat Duck:


Enjoying the menu


Lichen


Mock Turtle Soup, including mushrooms


Wine gums at the Fat Duck

So the circus is in town, or at least a burlesque/circus group from Australia: La La Parlour. I'm intrigued, and I've been invited along to see the show, so I'll be travelling a few hours into North Holland to see it tonight. Apparently, the Amsterdam Burlesque Festival is also starting in a few days, who knew these things were so popular?

Plans for Saturday are slowly congealing, the big question is where in London to have a pub lunch. A couple of great suggestions, but I need to make a solid decision soon.

In other news, I just got a call from the Fat Duck asking if I could fill another table for the day we've already got booked. The answer was, of course, yes. Logistics are going to be tricky because the tables are seated at different times. Gah, must send emails around.

Fairly fast, although there was no time to take photos during the excitement.

I was making an expresso and thinking about what a weird echo - a sort of popping noise - was coming from the other side of the kitchen. Acrid smoke billowing up from a part of the toaster that has no contact with bread or breadcrumbs was a bad sign.

Poor thing is sitting upside down on my balcony doused in water because the flames deep in the electrical part didn't look like they'd go out without assistance.

Mid-morning flights are ok - enough time to faff around with last-minute emails, packing etc, and still make it to the airport with heaps of time to spare. Better than mid- or late-afternoon flights where I'm always tempted to do a few hours of work after an early check-in: those are normally unbelievably rushy, catastrophic days.

One of the nice things about travelling as often as I do, is being able to use the first class check in desks even when travelling (as I mostly do) on deepest darkest economy fares. And normally the people who work at these counters are relaxed, happy and focused on the customer. I had a lovely chat to my check in agent about not knowing postcodes any more because no-one seems to post things any more, and she visibly checked to see if I was on the upgrade list. Of course, being deepest darkest economy, I'm not on those lists, and got a sweet apology about it. No matter, I was planning on sleeping across the Atlantic anyway.

Got to the endless security interview queue and was one of the last to board and was pulled aside at the gate. And got an upgrade anyway. Yay! United Airlines has a much improved business class on their 767s now, although reverse facing seats are a novelty for me. Inflight entertainment is no longer DAT tapes, but something fairly modern (though Windows-based) and with very high compression rates (visible in films with lots of black, like Moon, which I very much enjoyed other than the artifacting). I also saw an episode of 30 Rock, which I'd never heard about, and which was really absurdistly funny, leading to loud guffaws. Ugly Betty was surprisingly sweet and yet quite sharp and with a bizarre oversaturated picture. Long haul travel is great if like me, you don't have a TV and seldom get to the movies. I ate well - really really nice steak (!) - and drank some pretty good Californian wines, and got about 6 hours sleep too, and had a wonderful chat with a very very cool, smart and stylish cabin attendant who'd worked for the airline for 18 years and had a marvellous mid-Atlantic yet oddly European accent in English and spoke wonderfully classy Dutch and German.

I was also pushed to Economy Plus from Chicago and chatted with two older gents about life in Portland. Everyone on the plane was pretty chatty. I was developing a good feeling about Portland.

When I arrived, I was not surprised at not having luggage. The last couple of times through Chicago this has happened too. But the luggage people already had the missing luggage slip filled out when I popped into their office which was pretty cool. They said that my bag would be delivered to the hotel later in the evening.

So I hopped on the local light rail (USD2.30, all those airports which have ridiculously high public transport charges for their segment of the journey, like Sydney, should take note) into town. Clean, quick, and full of chatty friendly people with edgy urban fashion, tattoos, and random piercings. Had a couple of conversations on the way in. Walked the three blocks to the hotel and marvelled at how little the blocks were, how charming the autumn leaves were, and how clean and neat the city is.

Arrived at the Ace Hotel, and was taken aback at the laid-back hipness. The concierge, who I had assumed was a hipster drinking coffee with his mates in the lounge area, wandered up and asked if he could help. Checkin was very casual and cool and when I asked about where I could get a coffee, he pointed me at the branch of Stumptown Coffee off the lobby (also painfully cool, filled with pierced cyclists).

My room has a wall plastered in pages from a very old illustrated dictionary. The bedhead is covered in East German army tarpaulin. The blankets are retro-30's institutional brown and grey. The bathroom is a temple to the clawfooted bath that sits proudly in the middle of the tiled expanse. And it's cheap - some of the rooms are "European-style" too which means shared bathrooms, which must be even cheaper. Loads of people with Apple laptops sitting drinking espresso-based drinks and lugging sound or video equipment with them.

Off to the busy restaurant on the other side of the lobby, Clyde Common, and immediately seated at a common table. Service was swift and friendly. All the staff wear flannel, and almost all the (making assumptions here) guys had beards. Food simple but sharp and elegant. Great flavour balances, lots of local wines and beers on the drinks list. I started listening to the people next to me talk about Cocteau. Eventually they dragged me (kicking and screaming) into their conversation and it turned out that they'd just been to the premiere of an alternative opera I'd been thinking about seeing the next night. Long story short I got instructed to tag along for the evening and I met an interesting cross-section of Portland including people from the Portland Opera who're staging an interesting Philip Glass piece, Orphée. It was fun if a little boozy and late for me.

Took an epicurian walking tour of Portland with a gentle hangover and some tiredness the next day, really really interesting, especially the microbreweries. Went to Powell's (oh my God, why did no one tell me about that bookshop? Vast, diverse, shambolic and very very good) and must now buy more luggage.

The Beggar's Opera performance was excellent: quite exciting, oddly anachronistic while being very contemporary, and with great singing, music and stage presence. As far as I can tell, Opera Theatre Oregon is a semi-professional group which makes the achievement even more impressive. I met the creative director, as she thought she knew me (I must have a doppelgänger here because it's happened a couple of times now).

Had dinner at Higgins and was disappointed - provincial fine dining from the 1980's - it's all very well and good to source locally etc, but not at the price of an unimaginative menu, dishes that were ho-hum etc. My waitron was good, professional, competent, but most of the rest of the people walked around as if in their sleep - perhaps a good metaphor for the restaurant overall.

Today was breakfast at Mother's - overrated but nice - a stroll to the farmer's market at the University, which was really earnestly local, green and tasty. Loads of mushrooms, fantastic local fruit and vegetables, and aggressively authentic bread. Ate a new vegetable for the first time, a tasty, citrussy salad green called Ficoide glaciale. Brilliant.

I've got a day and a half left and still want to catch some films at the Living Room, a cinema complex which is agressively anti-Hollywood (lots of digital short film), head out to the Fine Art museum which is running a Chinese contemporary art show, and perhaps the Oregon Historical Society to learn about Native American culture and colonialisation.

All up, awesome. I should have packed some flannel, and perhaps some cool. But otherwise it's been great and sometimes even dry.

I've had a couple of fun dinner parties in the last weeks. Funnily enough, a number of friends who came along have recently embarked on new relationships. When asked if their new squeezes were coming along, it appeared that they weren't even told. I guess I'm the scary friend these days ;-)

Tonight I'm doing yeast pastry stuff for tomorrow and next week - watching dough rise for the white and rye bagels for a party tomorrow, wholemeal and semolina baguettes for next week. If you don't do yeast baking, I really recommend trying it - it's actually not very complicated although there are a couple of tricks to learn, and it's very satisfying, both for the relaxed, slow process and also the yummy results!

There's a decadent (and yet so very simple, it's cream and potato and garlic and an interesting kind of German bacon I found at the market this morning) gratin in the oven, and I expect to eat sometime before midnight. Yay.

I'll be participating in a workshop on Tuesday on improving the customer experience at railway stations this week - never done this kind of thing before but I hope that my enthusiasms (good wine bars at stations, anyone?) will get translated to bricks and mortar, haha.

Wednesday evening is theatre night, and I've rounded up a couple of English-speakers to go and help support a new theatre group who're putting on History Boys.

There's been unexpected small-scale progress on a whole bunch of issues at work. But the emotional cost of pushing people to do their jobs (well, or even just at all) seems a bit high compared to actual results, enough that my management tree has been encouraging me to take at least two or three 'compensation' days off a month. I have been, not unexpectedly, taking them up on this offer.

Late next week I'll be going to Portland in the US Pacific north-west for a long weekend, which will be interesting, not least for the time-gap since I was last there - when flares were in, laugh.

Typically, there's a houseguest arriving while I'm away. Since C has already done this before (and was half of the story of how my current kitchen was unpacked and sorted out without my intervention), I'm sure it's not going to be a problem.

I'll be seeing a few friends and family next month, especially during a bit of a boozy day in London. I'm not normally a birthday person, but it's all getting quite exciting with people planning to rock up from near and far (with a few who were even at the dimly-remembered 21st bash) and an itinerary of dinner and drinks in places ranging from Amsterdam, Barcelona, and Bray to Zwolle (restaurant dinner booked there for more than just reasons of alphabetic correctness).

I've decided not to let work get me down.

I was in New York for a long weekend in early September, and had a fabbo night at Terroir in the East Village, ate at Katz's Deli etc.

Ellis Island was more moving than I expected, and an unexpected stuble-across, the African Burial Ground monument and its' memorial that begins "For all those who were lost. For all those who were stolen. For all those who were left behind..." - unexpectedly heart-rending.

Paris a couple of weeks later with Jules was awesome - stunning weather. Far far too much champagne on a hot Saturday led to a scolding from a policewoman for drinking at a cemetery. Breakdancers on the lawn in front of the Eiffel Tower. More champagne. Wonderful company, and a great time. Found time in S & I's crazy crazy itinerary to sit down by a canal and eat cured meat and drink fairly fine Crozes-Hermitage for a couple of hours before scooting back home.

I now officially have a Brazilian cleaner. I realise my kitchen cupboards are white after the first appointment. She said (I think, cos it was in Portuguese) that all guys are shitty housekeepers. It's true for me, at least.

Lots of other awesome that I can't remember.

Oh yeah, I have been curious for years about a disused raised track that seems to run parallel to the Paris-Toulouse mainline near Orléans at Saran for about 20km. Aqueduct? Monorail?



Nope, Aérotrain!



Described as a sort of guided hovercraft. Brilliant. This is the kind of brilliant but whacky that Europe should be doing more of.

I've been in southern France this weekend to catch up with my Dad. It was great apart from the expensive train tickets (more expensive than travelling to New York via Chicago!) and the logistic disasters in Brussels which made my train quite late into Paris, made me skip dinner, and just make my connecting train after good luck with the metro, by 4 minutes.

I cooked breakfast of omelettes with truffles (oh! the lardons were even yummier than the truffles) on the first morning, and made dinner of steak and truffles which was a bit of a hit. We chatted, drank wine, went to local markets, picnicked, wandered around and had a very chilled time including lunch with friends (mmm aperitifs in the garden, then rabbit stew for the main!). I am travelling encumbered with four small(ish) raspberry plants, a bunch of garlic chives for my balcony garden.

I am now travelling home on a TGV across northern France - long long shadows from the sunset on the flat plains, with the landscape flickering by at 280km/h. The internet's working well too, just downloaded some documents at 2Mb/s. Shame I've got to work as soon as I pass Brussels.

Last weekend, I was visiting friends in Haarlem where a pretty big Jazz festival was running, and as you do, we kind of ran out acts we wanted to stand around for and found ourselves in one of my favourite little bars, Briljant, which is tucked away from the main squares and streets but which has a pretty good range of whisky (although nothing like one of my favourites elsewhere with more than a thousand fresh open bottles) and some interesting beers which I've never really got around to trying yet.

Quite how interesting, I was going to discover. Choosing a German weissenbier off the menu, I was disturbed (and secretly pleased) that it tasted of bacon, or more precisely hickory smoke. Mmm. Aecht Schenkerla Rauchbier is the the thing from Bamberg. If you like bacon, you may well like this beer.

A very pleasant evening, although I was burping (in that beer way) baconish flavours for half the night.

The butter overdose was tonight when I trialled a recipe for chicken supreme with mushroom, butter, cream and madeira sauce. The sauce was deadly, but so was the chicken, which wasn't so much fried as poached in hot butter in the oven. Nice but borderline toxic. I've got an oddly pleasant oil overdose feeling and think I'll have an early night.

It's an unseasonally warm night and I've baked another loaf of handmade bread. The last couple of weeks have been really successful on the bread front (if not on too many other fronts, work, sigh) and with houseguests and friends regularly popping by, a nice way to feed people.

(And what a marvellous batch of houseguests it's been, A and her Rock God from Sydney, M & F from Minnesota with all their fabulous news, I & S on their round-the-world sojourn, plus K & R from Melbourne, and a few more who were only here overnight: you're all welcome back any time! Taking visitors around opens your eyes again, and this summer thanks to one group had the unexpected pleasure of seeing a private Rembrandt etching hanging in someone's house, just because we were playing respectful tourists. Awesome!)

There I was, idly reading a newspaper on the train in the morning as part of my work-avoidancechillout regimen, when I was suddenly struck by a report about a consumer association study on commercially available pizzas in the Netherlands. Six of the twenty-nine pizzas sampled were topped with what the researchers called a cheese analogue - something like cheese that is made of vegetable fats, not milk products.

Weird. I'd not heard of it before. Is this common? Or commonly-known?

Also, in a fit of work-avoidancecreativity enhancement at work, I stumbled across something quite astonishing. Vegetarian bacon salt, (slogan "everything should taste of bacon"). Who knew?

Happy Bastille Day, everyone!

I learned a new word yesterday. Schmaltz. It's apparently the name of the fat under the skin of chickens, and is one of the most marvellous things about chicken soup. I'm sure it's good for me, all those yiddish-speaking grandmothers can't be wrong!





A whole chicken went into the pot, and the result has been glorious (and good for me too!). I've been a bit sick lately, probably a bit of exhaustion, really. Early nights after good soup for me!

But awesome self-contained houseguests (hi A and T!), a radical make over of my lounge room and kitchen (read domestic intervention, thanks R and T!) and generally fine weather have been marvellous.

I've got a birthday coming up this year which I'm planning (uncharacteristically) to make a bit special. Plans are firming up for dinner in a small town called Bray, near London in November. Let me know if you think you might be able to make it and I'll do my best to get reservations for a Saturday night, yeah right, but we'll see.